Complete Explanation:A scornful look at the reception of German ballerina Fanny Elssler in Baltimore. The New York artist ridicules the adulation given the touring performer by the Baltimore public. During her July 1840 visit there, an enthusiastic group of young men removed the horses from Elssler's carriage and pulled it through the streets themselves.

Here Elssler dances in an open carriage driven by a black coachman in livery and drawn by well-dressed men with asses' heads, who wave their hats in the air and shout "Eehow!" A bespectacled, pipe-smoking man with a violin prostrates himself before the dancer.